Dialoguing on Miniature Cinema as New Art: Sheena Wilson with Midi Onodera

Sheena Wilson

Abstract

MIDI ONODERA IS A WELL-RECOGNIZED Canadian filmmaker with more than thirty years of filmmaking experience. She has had screenings internationally at such prestigious venues as the Andy Warhol Museum, the International Festival of Documentary and Short Films, Bilbao, Spain, the Rotterdam International Film Festival, the Berlin International Film Festival, the National Gallery of Canada, and the Toronto International Film Festival. Her first film, a seven-minute short film entitled Reality-Illusion that she shot on Super Eight, appeared in 1979, while she was still in high school. She now has twenty-four films, two television-writing credits, two commissioned artist profiles, two feature length works, two interactive DVDs, 434 short videos, and a total of 467 films and videos to her name.

As an acknowledgement of Midi Onodera's long and productive career as a Canadian artist and filmmaker who has consistently demonstrated critical engagement with her subjects and her chosen media, we have invited her to be the guest artist-filmmaker for the inaugural issue of Imaginations: Journal of Cross-Cultural Image Studies. In this dialogue-interview, she provides insight into the Vidoodles (video shorts) she created for this issue of the journal, and she discusses a number of related issues including various transformations that have taken place in technology and how that has impacted her creative production and her relationship with various media over the span of her career.